Day 32 Looking for Spiritual Gifts

Did you ever notice how we are given gifts or blessings when some outside force thinks we are ready for them? I remember struggling so hard to learn the 5 spiritual languages. I wanted to learn them so bad and I kept asking and asking to be taught the languages and I could not. No one would come to my aid. It was like I was forbidden from this knowledge. No one would help me. But several years later when I had almost forgotten about it and had been pursuing other spiritual practices and working on being impeccable in other areas, suddenly I was given the gift of a spiritual language! It came out of the blue, wham! I was shocked and delighted and I asked why now and not way  back then, and the answer was that I was not ready way back then.

So this is how we sometimes learn spiritual things. When we are considered ready to learn them. Don't be concerned when you don't have a certain gift or knowledge. Just keep working on being the best you can be in every area. You will get your gift when you are impeccable enough to receive it and wise enough to use it correctly. That is just the way it is.

Ask me anything by sending an email to shaman@shamanelder.com

Aho

Shaman Elder Maggie

www.shamanelder.com

Day 31 Your Medicine Bag.

Every Shaman through time and space has carried some kind of medicine bag.  I have a very small leather pouch maybe one inch long and 1/2 inch wide on a leather thong strap that I wear around my neck under my clothes. You would have to look hard to see the leather necklace around my neck. No one has ever noticed it or asked about it because I don't show it off or draw attention to it. It is no one's business but mine. You could carry it in your pocket if you could not wear it. But I feel it should be close to your heart, to your essence.

Inside is my own personal medicine as well as medicines I am practiced in using. Select carefully and with guidance what you wear around your neck. You are responsible for each item in your medicine bag. You are charged with the duty to wear them respectfully, to honor their power and to use them only for healing yourself and others with their permission. You become the carrier of their power. That is a big responsibility.

Gather your items slowly. I have been gathering my medicine bag all my life. Right now I am going through a major transition so I have added a piece of moonstone to my medicine bag. You can look up moonstone if you want to know why I have added that.

Your medicine bag says everything about you, who you are, who you are as a healer, how you heal, how powerful you are, who your allies are, what your power is. It becomes a finger print of you, the shaman.

Your medicine bag contains all the power of the items in it. Those items are given to you, not selected by you. It is a holy thing.  It is medicine for you! I make custom medicine bags for people if you ever want me to make one for you. Just go to http://www.shamanelder.com/invitation.htm

Aho

Shaman Elder Maggie

www.shamanelder.com

Day 29: Nourishing Life

Here is a quote from an old Chinese book that might have been exactly what my Shaman ancestor told to that  Buddhist monk because this is what was taught to me.

"In everything pertaining to Nourishing Life, one should listen well but incorporate the essential, look wide but choose the best. One cannot rely on one's bias to a single practice. Moreover, the danger is that those who devote themselves to one of these practices trust only their discipline of choice. Those who are expert in breathing say that one can extend the number of years only through circulation of breath. Those who know the methods for bending and stretching [their body] say that one can avoid aging only through daoyin. Those who know the methods based on herbs and plants say that one can surpass any limit only through medicines and pills. When the path you walk does not bear fruit, it is because of biases like these.

Source: Baopu zi, chapter 6. Translation published in Fabrizio Pregadio, Great Clarity: Daoism and Alchemy in Medieval China, 134-35 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006).

Aho

Shaman Elder Maggie

http://www.shamanelder.com/

Day 28 What A Hopi Healer Taught Me About Ceremony

I can tell you the true story a Hopi healer told me. He spent 7 days preparing for a ceremony. He fasted, he dried certain grasses and prepared certain potions. He made a special altar and really worked strenuously for 7 days to have everything perfect. On the morning of the 7th day he went out at sunrise and began his chanting and singing and prayers and doing all these actions and he went on and on for hours.

 

But he could not feel his connection with Creator! Here he had done all this work to please Creator and to call upon him and all the Spirits and he felt nothing. But he kept up with the ceremony for hours more and yet he could not feel that connection, that presence of the spirits.

It was getting dark now but he kept going, doing his ceremony over and over with great fervor but nothing.

Finally it was late at night. The whole thing had been a dismal failure. He felt like a failure as a healer. He put away his ceremonials and went to a tree in the forest. He sat down with his back against the tree in the moonlight and he wept bitterly for a long time and then he just cried out, "why didn't you listen to me?"

And he heard a voice say, "You were so full of yourself and your ceremony there was no room for ME to enter! Here by this tree you are doing the most beautiful ceremony and here I am!"

That is what I wish to teach you about ceremony. Ceremony is what you are doing in your heart. Any rituals or step by step instructions for this moon or that feast day or the other holiday might be just for show, not for Creator. The best ceremony is the one you make in your heart.

Aho!

Shaman Elder Maggie

For more go to www.shamanelder.com

Day 27 How to Manifest Your Intentions More Quickly

There are actually two things that determine the rate of manifestation. One is whether you have any unconscious blocks holding back what you want to manifest. They are usually non benefitting beliefs that you have had for a long time and aren't even aware that they are there anymore. So if you can find them and replace them with benefitting beliefs, things will be able to manifest more quickly.

Second is impeccability. The more impeccable you are with yourself, the faster things manifest. Impeccability means doing your very best each day, each hour, each minute. It does not mean being perfect. No human being is perfect. But getting straight with your life, doing what you need to do as best you can all the time, not being lazy, not procrastinating, being honest with yourself and others.

And you are definitely walking in this direction! So keep walking and working with beliefs. Some of my students are now finding that they are manifesting their wishes almost instantly. And to their dismay if their wish is for something bad, it manifests just as quickly as a wish for something good. Energy is energy and cares not what you decide to manifest. So the old slogan, be careful what you wish for, you just may get it, is so very true.

Watch your thoughts. Think deliberately. What you think is what will manifest quicker and quicker as you go along in this course.

Aho!

Shaman Elder Maggie

www.shamanelder.com for more!

Day 26 What Is Sacred Space?

When I think of Sacred Space I think  of you! You are a sacred space, a big one if you will recognize it. And you get to bring your sacred space everywhere you go. And you offer your sacred space to others when you are in their presence whether they feel it or not. You are the church, you are the holy ground, you are the embodiment of energy and when you come into contact with other people they are also in contact with this energy. So it is your job to bring the energy of Creator into you and shine it through you wherever you are. You, yourself create a Sacred space wherever you are. Do you doubt it? Then think about it some more. Really realize it.

Those that need to create a Sacred Space by building something or doing some kind of energy work are in my opinion not confident within themselves and their own power to realize that they themselves are the most sacred space.

Now sometimes I feel that I need to wear a certain kind of stone to balance out my Sacred Space when I am feeling sick or tired or just out of balance in some way, or when I am going into a certain situation outside the home, visiting a hospital for example, I take a green stone with me to enhance the heading qualities of my sacred space. Here is where awareness and balance again play such an important part in a shaman's work. Intent too. What is your intention for your sacred space? And what are you doing to your sacred space when you are in a "poor little me" attitude?

"Would this be something you would recommend in an effort to experience daily activity from a higher  perspective?"

Realizing that you are Sacred Space and that you share this sacred space with every other person on the planet, yes, this is a way to experience daily activity from a higher perspective! Aho!

Shaman Elder Maggie

http://www.shamanelder.com/

Day 25:How Relationships Work According to Traditional Shamanism

Here is how it goes according to my own shamanic lineage- some good common sense for all of us. When two people merge and make a commitment it is like this. Every person has their own path to walk. Sometimes we meet people who cross our path and we enjoy their friendship for a time while our paths are close together but then we move away from each other as our paths continue on their way. This is natural, right and good! Sometimes we meet someone whose path runs parallel to ours for a while and then curves off slowly in another direction. Sometimes we meet people whose path runs parallel to ours and we can walk to gather hand in hand for decades. Sometimes one person jumps off their path and starts to walk the other person's path instead. Many women have devoted 40 years to the path of their husband and then when he passes over they write me crying that they realize they have not walked one step on their path in forty years and how can they find it now and how can they catch up to where they should be. How sad! Women give up their own paths more easily than men and that is a cultural thing as women were taught to do this.

Anybody can be guilty of seducing a person to come walk their path for them or with them. No one likes to walk their path alone.  So people are always looking for someone who is willing to abandon their own path and come walk the path of another. But it is not fulfilling for either person. The one asking for help does not get the help he or she is looking for because no one can walk your path except you. They think they will get farther ahead, that it will make the path easier and usually does physically but it actually just delays any forward progress. The user ends up sitting in a proverbial wheelchair on his path while the partner does all the pushing. They don't move forward as well as if the person would just walk on his own two feet- and the pusher is angry about pushing and the user is angry because the pusher of the wheelchair is not pushing fast enough... Well it does not work.

And to walk the path of someone else is completely ignoring your own path and you will feel that hole in your spirit no matter how you try to cover it up and say you are sacrificing your path for the sake of someone else. Doesn't work. Mother Theresa helped thousands of people exactly BY walking her own path! She did not give up anything. She did not suffer for someone else's sake! She walked her path with courage and joy!

For a free consultation with Shaman Elder Maggie Just send an email to shaman@shamanelder.com

Or visit http://www.shamanelder.com/